how do i know if microsoft ODBC Driver 13 for SQL Server is running TLS 1.2 or higher

Question

how do i know if microsoft ODBC Driver 13 for SQL Server is running TLS 1.2 or higher

Answer 1

SSL is a handshaking protocol. The client sends to the server the list of SSL versions and algorithms it supports. The server compares that to what it supports and chooses the highest version and best algorithm and then that is what is used.

On the client side you can see the versions and algorithms that are configured by using IISCrypto. In general anything less than TLS 1.2 should be turned off. YOu can do the same thing on the server side.

For security reasons you shouldn't allow connections using anything less than TLS 1.2 unless you are dealing with very old clients that cannot be upgraded to newer TLS versions. But that would only be a temporary situation. Most major web services have already disabled TLS less than 1.2 and most corporate networks have done the same thing. You can read more about TLS deprecation here. For SQL Server support for TLS refer to this article.

For web apps you can check the SSL settings by going to the site and looking at the security information. For ODBC though this connection is done behind the scenes. I don't know a way to see the underlying network connection directly. It might be the ODBC logs, if any. Otherwise use a network sniffing tool like Fiddler to monitor the connection. Provided both the client and server have TLS 1.2 enabled then that is what should be used.